Excel® 2007 Charts

Chapter 6. Working with Shapes and Other Graphics

In This Chapter

• Inserting and customizing shapes

• Working with other types of graphics

• Introducing Office 2007 SmartArt

• Using shapes with charts

When it comes to visuals to enhance a presentation, Excel has a lot more up its sleeve than charts. As you probably know, you can insert a wide variety of graphic images into your worksheet to add pizzazz to an otherwise boring report. And, as you'll see, you can even combine these graphics with your charts.

This chapter describes the non–chart–related graphic tools available in Excel. These consist of shapes, SmartArt, clip art, and imported images.

Using Shapes

The Microsoft Office applications, including Excel, provide access to a variety of customizable graphic images known as shapes. You can add a shape to a worksheet's drawing layer or to a chart.

Access these shapes by using the Insert

The Shapes gallery is shown in Figure 6-1.

Figure 6-1. The Shapes gallery

Drawing a shape is easy and very intuitive. The shapes in the gallery are grouped into the following categories:

• Recently Used Shapes: Contains the shapes that you've used recently, making it easy to find those shapes again

• Lines: Twelve styles of lines, including arrows and freehand drawing

• Rectangles: Nine styles of rectangles

• Basic Shapes: Forty–two ...